Fugue
by flecksofpoppy
Summary: Aeris and Tseng attend their last performance of "Loveless" together.


I've been wanting to write something about Aeris and Tseng for a while now. Interestingly, the number 88 in Japanese can often mean "a great many" or "countless." (Of course I had to google the number 88.) Shameless use of other devices I've used in prior fics...file photos for one. I love myself some file photos. Please forgive any Crisis Core inaccuracies.

And thank you very much to deadcell for beta reading!

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><p><strong>Fugue<strong>

Tseng has taken Aeris to see _Loveless_ once every year since he became a Turk.

Since it has become increasingly difficult to convince her to come with him, for the last three years, he had delivered bundles of letters. He never tells her how _it_ happened, how the Shinra military gunned down two men searching for their freedom, how he feels an ache deep somewhere in his chest, how he fears it.

Aeris has been lovely since she was a child. She is lovelier still, when he delivers the dress he always has custom-tailored by Shinra's best for her to wear, asks her what her favorite color is each year, asks her what type of flower she is selling that week. He knows her exact measurements, her exact height now, just as Hojo does.

Every time, Aeris clasps his hand; she is nervous in the theatre on the upper plate, though secret identities don't matter here. The fact that Tseng is a Turk, the fact that Aeris is Cetra; facts that don't matter in a darkened place. A place where playacting evokes invented emotion, choking everyone in every box, in every seat; and in the dark, Tseng looks at Aeris's hair./p

And even as he thinks, _I'm sorry_, he strokes her hair through the leather gloves, only his fingertips touching the strands, the part of his hands not encased by the skin of his trade.

She lets him, as she always does, and sighs, guiltily, but sighs nonetheless, and closes her eyes. There are tears on her face, highlighted subtly by the glow of the stage lights, low and so far away, and so bright that Tseng has to turn his eyes away. But he continues to run his fingers through her hair, like a river, like a stream with shining fish that he invents in his mind where the dialog is a distant presence.

This is Shinra's box. It even has the insignia on it, and even amidst the darkened rows of plush red seats, the small, quiet patrons whispering amongst themselves to see who has the better view, who has the most expensive seat reserved for the season, Tseng strokes Aeris's hair and he feels something in his throat, like flowers blossoming there to choke him, pungent and loudly colored and suffocating.

Aeris makes a sound; she dips her face down, and her tears fall onto the fine silk of her dress.

_Loveless_was the first play Tseng had ever seen, after Veld had told him to attend and wear a pair of leather gloves. He had gone alone.

Midgar turned him into a patron of the arts and a consummate killer.

"You look beautiful," he had said, and offered her his arm.

She had smiled; she always did. She smiled at him in ways that he was suspicious of, in ways that women often did, in ways that people who lied smiled at him.

But when Aeris cries later in the dark, just the two of them there for those few moments, he knows that she is incapable of lying at that moment.

"You look beautiful," he whispers now. And she just hides, both hands clasped over her face.

Her letters to Zack, the final bundle, are tucked into his pocket; she will receive them afterwards, as has been their arrangement for the past few years. He doesn't know why she wants them back, but she does.

She does look beautiful. He wonders, in his darkest moments, without his gloves, lying naked at night in his own bed-his bed paid for, his sheets paid for, his betrayal paid for by the Company-he wonders what it would be like if they were different people. But he knows it would be no different, because this is who he is, and he has no regrets.

But her hair does look beautiful, and his eyes burn, as they do every time. It's not shameful here, just as her tears under the guise of manufactured emotion are to be expected; even a man in his position can be expected to cry during a play called _Loveless_.

"Don't touch me," she shudders after a few moments.

He grips her hair, pulls it back, tilts her face toward his; they look at each other, two dogs dressed in finery, two homeless, parentless orphans playacting, and she kisses him hard on the mouth.

He kisses her back, and he can feel the tears on her face, the tears on his own, as they embrace. His hand is still in her hair, and now the black leather touches that sacred river, and Aeris has her hand in his hair, pulling it out so that it scatters around his shoulders like night.

She kisses him for a long time, or so it seems, and there are a few admiring patrons, smiling smally, rubbing their spouse's arm affectionately. _Young people here, at the theatre; so rare nowadays._

Tseng lets her hair go, lets her go, and Aeris draws back.

She looks at him, looks at his shoulder, at his hair, and drops her eyes. "What were you like," she whispers, more for her own benefit than the actors, "_before_?"

He wants to strike her. He wants to _hurt_her. He wants to show her what those black leather gloves are capable of, but he doesn't need to, because she already knows.

So instead, he falters, he feels like a young man again, like a boy without leather, without Veld, without a suit. And he sucks in air, looks at the distant lit up stage, at the box, and his own lap, at his own shining black shoes, his hair undone, his fists clenching.

And he says, "Afraid."

"How beautiful," Aeris replies breathlessly, looking at him.

"How beautiful you are," he replies. "Zack always-"

Aeris turns her eyes downward. "Take me home," she says, "right now."

"No," he replies. And she looks afraid; he is always drunk off her fear. He is always swayed by her fear; because she is the only thing that _he_is afraid of.

He puts an arm around her, pulls her close as she shivers and he can feel her trying not to cry all over again, but for a very different reason. And his voice is tight and controlled as he says, "Look at them. Listen to the words. Aren't they beautiful?"

"Yes," she says, her voice broken. "Yes, they are."

"Do you ever see anything like this in Sector 3?" he asks, because he must, because he knows why Veld sent him here those first few weeks. How he had returned to his room feeling ashamed, feeling like he didn't belong, how he _knew_it was for his own good. But now, he doesn't know why he does it to Aeris, doesn't know why he insists on hearing her admit her own shame. Because she has nothing to be ashamed of; he is just angry. Like the young man he never was.

"Do you feel beautiful?" he asks, tightening his already painful grip on her arm.

"Yes, Director," she whispers. And there in her voice, is that obstinance, that hatred.

"Do you like the dress?" he asks.

"I do, Director," she says, calm now.

"Do you want the letters you wrote, Aeris?"

"Why did you not deliver them?" she asks, and her voice is cold, her body tense.

And he looks at her, even though he already knows the question is coming. He says nothing.

"That is why you bring me here," she whispers, angry now, "like a doll. That is why you dress me up, put me in these clothes."

"No," is all he says, and releases her.

They whisper so quietly even the actors don't hear them. The acts pass their eyes; they speak, angry, hushed, crying, discrete.

"We're at the last act," Tseng says softly, after minutes of silence.

During the intermission, they sit silently next to one another, as alone inside of the box as they are in every day life.

"I wish we were not," she finally replies, and looks at him.

And now she cries angrily, cries like the 19-year-old girl that she is. And Tseng wraps his arms around her then, like the 25-year-old boy that he is, coldly, but fondly. And they are lost together, imagining, but knowing their place more than most anyone of any age ever has. He buries his face in her shoulder now, and his tears stain the blue silk of her dress.

"Tell me a story," he says at last. "Tell me..."

"I dreamt of the promised land," she finally says, the words thick in her throat. Her fingers are combing through his hair, hard, desperate.

"What did they say?" Tseng breathes.

"They said nothing," she says back, her voice strengthening. "I dreamt of the promised land. And in it, I was dead."

Tseng shakes his head. "That cannot be their intention."

She smiles now, and it frightens him. It is new, this expression; in this ritual they have carried out for so many years now, he has never seen her smile.

"This is the last performance we'll attend," she says softly. Her head is shaking and now she is simply looking down; no tears, no dread, no emotion.

"You dare doubt the President, the company?" he asks. Even though Aeris hates them, no one in their right mind would assume its vulnerability, its naivete.

"Yes," she says quietly. The lights of the stage, the final act, catch the sheen of her blue silk dress, her waist, her neck, her hair in curling tendrils.

"You asked...what was I like," he says finally, and he reaches out fingertips that don't quite touch, "before now? Before Shinra?"

She nods with a startled expression.

"Alone," he says. His hair around his shoulders, and Aeris reaches out and takes a few strands in her hand, just as he has hers.

"Alone," she replies, "like me?"

"Yes," he says, "but now..."

"Yes, Director," she says, "you are the only man that makes me cry."

He smiles subtly. She smiles too. They smile at each other.

"Your eyes," she says finally, and tugs his head back to look her in the face, stands up and draws close.

No one is watching them now, too enraptured in the final ten minutes of the last act.

"You are afraid," she draws closer, so that their lips are inches apart. "You're afraid," she hisses again, "you're afraid of me. Afraid of your own sin. Aren't you?" Her hand is sharp in his hair, the way she grips it.

"Yes," he whispers. "Yes, I am."

She presses her lips to his again, reaches down into his jacket to grab the letters; she finds more than that, and he lets her.

"What is this?" she asks, and for once, she is surprised.

"Letters," he replies simply. She falls backward onto the seat she has been on, the fabric of her dress rustling noisily.

"This," she says. And her letters to Zack fall to the floor.

"This," she says again, and her hands are shaking. "Is this...you would go this far?"

"Don't question how far I would go," he says; a warning that she has already heeded. "No, it's..."

"Her," she says, her voice broken, but she holds the picture close. "My mother."

A faded picture from a file. A captive.

"Yes," he says.

"You monster," she finally says after a moment.

"Yes," he says again.

"If I could kill you right now," she hisses, but holds the photograph carefully, a delicate thing, a precious thing.

"Yes," he repeats.

"Tseng," she says. The tears are there again; this time, Tseng draws her close.

"_Before_ everything..." he says quietly, "_before_... I was like this."

Tseng has taken Aeris to see _Loveless_once every year since he became a Turk. This year will be the last.

Impromptu performances of _Loveless_go up in Edge, and Tseng attends in plainclothes with an excuse to the others.

It is the only time that he weeps. For everything.


End file.
